1. Field
The invention has to do with equipment for picking up windrowed hay and fluffing it to promote drying, so the time between cutting and baling will be reduced and the effects of wet weather effectively overcome.
2. State of the Art
A variety of tractor-drawn, agricultural implements have been proposed heretofore to fluff windrowed hay or grain lying in a field after cutting, so air can pass through the mass of cut material to speed drying and, in the case of hay, to enable baling and harvesting of the hay sooner than would otherwise be possible, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,330,910; 2,559,862; 2,675,665; 2,719,399; and 3,084,497. This is particularly desirable when windrowed hay has been rained on, since it is important to dry the hay before it molds. Despite the several implements proposed by these patents, the most common procedure currently used in attempting to satisfactorily fluff windrowed hay is to turn the windrows over by using a tractor-drawn side-delivery, raking implement. However, raking in this manner places fresh hay from the bottom of the windrow on top to be undesirably blanched by the sun.
An additional U.S. Pat. No. 2,674,839 discloses a hay baler which can be utilized as a windrowed hay fluffer and does not turn over the windrow as it deposits it several feet from the original windrow. It employs the auger of the baler mechanism to move the picked-up hay sideways for passage onto a transversly sloping, discharge platform and for discharge at the upper end of the platform to form a new windrow parallel with the location of the old one.
Although fluffing implements heretofore proposed have supposedly been designed to accomplish fluffing by lifting and redepositing the cut materials, without stirring, spreading, or scattering, they must have fallen short in various aspects of performance, since none are commercially available. This is understandable when it is realized that much experimentation was necessary to arrive at the features of the present invention, which, after many trails, have been found to be important in achieving successful results.
While the implements of the prior art all employ, in one way or another, a rotary liftng device equipped with outwardly projecting tines, i.e. pick-up teeth, and while some employ one or another form of cleaning tines projecting between the teeth, or some form of stripper plates between which the teeth project, some form of guide plates at the ends of the lifting device to maintain windrow formation, and a downwardly sloping platform at the rear over which the material passes in discharging form the implement, apparently none have really overcome the persistent tendency I have encountered for hay to hang up on the implement and interfere with clean and effective discharge. Moreover, none have seemed to recognize nor to have effectively dealt with the need for flexibility in handling hay under varying conditions.
For example, in most instances it is desirable to have the speed of rotation of the pick-up device equal the ground speed of the implement. However, with grass hay, or in the morning when the leaves of alfalfa hay will stay on the stalks because of dew, a faster speed can be used advantageously to facilitate the operation. Also, when confronted with heavy green hay, a faster than ground speed is desirable for rotation of the pick-up device.